Examples of wireless nodes include but are not limited to Wi-Fi access points, Bluetooth beacons, 3G, 4G and 5G (cellular) nodes. There are literally millions of wireless nodes currently deployed across the globe today controlled by different entities, including service providers, corporates and private individuals. As the number of wireless nodes is very large and continues to grow and the wireless nodes are geographically dispersed and separately operated by different entities, several problems exist. First, it becomes extremely time-consuming and costly to keep an accurate record not only of existing wireless nodes, but also of newly deployed wireless nodes or existing wireless nodes that have been moved to a new location or have been removed entirely. For example, U.S. 2006/0095348 to Jones et al. discloses a method of building a wireless node database by deploying a vehicle equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) device and a wireless radio device to scan every street in a given area. The wireless nodes detected by the vehicle are recorded in a database in conjunction with GPS location information. This method requires an entity to purchase a good number of advance vehicles at a considerable expense and to spend weeks or months in scanning all the areas that are provided with the entity's wireless nodes. The lengthy scanning process has to be repeated once in while in order to receive the most current information.
Second, the updated record may not be immediately available to end users. Within a service provider, the location information of the wireless nodes collected (regardless the manner in which they are collected) may need to be reviewed and corrected to ensure their accuracy. The review and correction process may involve communicating with different individuals of the service provider and sending the document containing the location information and corrections back and forth. It is inevitable that some human errors will occur in dealing a significant amount of data with several persons. Moreover, the data from the service provider may not be available to or in the same format as the data of another service provider as each service provider may have their own protocols. If one provider wishes to incorporate the date from the other provider, the data from the other provider would need to be added into the computer system of the service provider or be modified. Both the addition and modification processes require some time. There is no central platform for a service provider to expediently collect and manage the location data or for service providers to facilitate the commingling of their location data. Furthermore, when the updated record is not available to the end user and the end user relied on the old record to go to an area that he or she expects to have WiFi access but now does not offer such connection, the end user may lose his or her confidence in the service provider's service, and thus affects its reputation and revenue. This adverse consequence is even more severe when the end user is in a roaming area and he or she needs to depend on WiFi access to avoid overcharges.
Third, the current systems and methods are unable to maintain a complete database containing location data of all the service provider's wireless nodes. There are always wires nodes missed by such systems and methods because they cannot reach certain areas containing the wireless nodes or cannot receive a complete list of all the wireless nodes. This deficiency is also often conceded in their marketing materials or technology specifications. Additionally, having a database as complete as possible is critical for providing location-based services, especially in emergency situations. When a 911 call is dialed, information identifying the closest wireless node can be transmitted to the database for comparing and determining if the location information of that node is already in the database. If yes, the location information can be forwarded to a public safety answering point (PSAP) and serve as a dispatchable location. The PSAP can then send the necessary help to that location. If the location information is not available in the database, the PSAP may not know where the call is coming from and where the emergency personnel should report. Moreover, government agencies are starting to impose requirements on service providers to maintain a database with location data for a certain percentage of their wireless nodes (e.g., 95%) and failure to maintain such a database may be penalized.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that solves the shortcomings mentioned above add that is improved over what is currently known in the art. There are also other deficiencies that can be remedied based on illustrative descriptions provided herein.